Advertisement
Published: September 30th 2023
Edit Blog Post
We opted for an early breakfast ahead of a long driving day to our first game reserve. Our journey was going well until the Google Maps instructions took us onto a dirt road which petered out into a track with just a farmer shepherding some cattle. Clearly not the R68! After a 7 point turn we retraced our steps and found the right turning. At the next junction we were sent off onto a 20km stretch of dirt road, which was fine in places and somewhat hair-raising in others. We were both quietly thinking to ourselves that at least it was so quiet we would not meet a lorry, when what should appear around the corner but… We pulled across as far as we could, and allowed the lorry driver to steer past us with all of 3 inches to spare!
Goggle offered us a choice of routes, and we decided to opt for the one that was wholly on R roads, on the grounds we’d at least get a metalled surface. Wrong! The next R road had 50km of dirt track before we reached our old friend the N2, and barrelled along happily before turning off into the game
reserve. Here, the dirt track didn’t matter, as David is by now an old hand on dirt roads, and we saw impala, zebra, giraffe and warthog on our 13km drive to the lodge. Hot towels always seem pointless on a plane, but here they were never more welcome. We were shown to our private lodge, with stunning views out over the reserve. We were asked if we wanted a late lunch, and accepted on the grounds we’d only shared a bag of crisps in the previous 6 hours driving 290km. Once in our lodge, we discovered that high tea was served at 3.30 ahead of the afternoon game drive. As it was already 2.30, lunch suddenly seemed rather unnecessary.
Leopard Mountain Lodge is in the Manyoni reserve which was created when 15 lodges agreed to remove their internal fences to create a far larger reserve that could support a much wider range and number of animals. They have ambitions to create game corridors into neighbouring reserves to further increase the scope to protect the endangered species they are home to.
We set off in the Land Cruiser at 4pm with our guide Graeme. We were looking for a
rare cheetah that had been seen the previous day, but were unsuccessful. But we saw plenty of other animals, including a pair of ostriches with their babies, vulture feasting on a giraffe carcass, some beautiful birds whose names we promptly forgot and chameleon which our guide spotted after dark as he drove along rough tracks with one hand on the wheel and the other shining a light into the bush. We had a very civilised stop half way through to enjoy a gin and tonic – this is the life!
Once back at the lodge we were greeted with cocktails and then dinner, after which we collapsed into bed.
Scroll down for more photos.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.073s; Tpl: 0.024s; cc: 10; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0321s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb